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THE GERMAN WAR 

ITS MORALS AND ENDS 



By 
SAMUEL RUSSELL 



WASHINGTON 
1917 



PREFATORY NOTE 



This article was written shortly after the 
outbreak of the German War. It has been 
amplified by interlineations, insertions, and ad- 
ditions which account for any lack of sequence 
in its structure. 

April 30, 1917. 



Copyright. 1917, by Samuel Russell 



/ 



m-i 1917 



'O)CI.A4G9040 



> 






<•> 



THE GERMAN WAR 

ITS MORALS AND ENDS 
FROM AN AMERICAN VIEWPOINT 



If the German advance on Paris had heen accomplished, the whole 
world would now know that the army entry into France was not pri- 
marily I'or defense, but was essentially an expedition of premeditated 
plunder and conquest. The world is well agreed as to the international 
wrong of the entry and presence of the Germans in Belgium. Had 
Belgium, indeed, with English money and French engineers, built 
defensive works on her German frontier as high as the defenses of 
Helgoland, it would not have given Germany the slightest justifica- 
tion, in either morals or law, for her perfidious violation of Belgium's 
neutrality. But what shall we say of the rights and morals of the 
Germans in France ? Surely the national and territorial rights of 
France are as valid against unprovoked aggression as are those of Bel- 
gium. And we should remember that France stands united, con- 
tained, and resolute in the defense of lier country against the tres- 
passer ajid invader. For her there will be a heritage of gloiy and 
honor for all the time to come. 

France was not guilty of any act provocative of the present war. 
She scrupulously withheld her troops from the frontier until the initial 
hostile acts upon the part of Germany. And at the break of war the 
French objective was neither Belgium nor Luxembourg, which were 
legal barriers against belligerents, but the German frontier in the 
Vosges countn'. If the motive for the French movement towards 
Alsace was revanche, the motive for the German movement through 
Belgium tow^ards France Avas greed and aggrandisement. And re- 
vanche is assuredly a higher motive than greed. Revanche is not 
wholly unrelated to justice, while greed runs only to pillage, piracy, 
and plunder. French revanche, moreover, was essentially a fine and 
chivalrous sentiment which of itself would not have eventuated in war. 

With Germany rested the issue of peace or war. Germany chose 
war. And this devtcher Krieg, in German morals, is a legitimate and 
proper business operation, which not only justifies itself, but all acts 
whatsoever which are expedient or plausibly necessary for its effectual 
prosecution. The rape of France was the moral and material basis 
of the industrial wealth of Germany. That military expediency re- 
quired the seizure of the paths which converge on Paris is the German 
reason for the ruin she has wrought in Belgium. All that Prussia has 
she has taken with the sword. Prussian policy and philosophy are an 
interpretation of the historical experience of the Prussian State, which 
has taken no account of the rights or relations of other states. And 

(3) 



4 THE GERMAN WAR 

so the German Krieg has become the traditional method of German 
acquisition and aggrandisement. Indeed, hriegen in German col- 
loquial speech denotes precisely this. And what does Germany want? 
She wants to make war and have other nations remain neutral, while 
she slays and destroys where she will. This is all that Germany asked 
of Great Britain, of France, of Russia, and of her quondam ally, the 
kingdom of Italy. Germany has not in good faith advanced one just 
reason for her waging of war. Her real reason is the prosecution of 
her premeditated plan to throw Europe into chaos for the purpose of 
adding to her territorial domains l)y the wreck and slaughter of her 
neighbors. 

This war is an atrocity made in Germany. It lacks even the ele- 
ments of a fair game with its seditious spies, incendiary bombs, and 
submarine torpedoes by which Germany has pushed her ubiquitous 
nose into the affairs and security of other nations until she has made 
of herself an international offense. Do the Germans think by these 
means to cower and conquer the nations? Of course they cannot do 
it. They are only laying up for themselves a store of wrath and eon- 
tempt that justly or unjustly will be visited upon their childrens' 
children, and froim which they may only be redeemed by a repudiation 
of the creed and the craft of those who prepare war and contrive offen- 
sive engines of death and devastation. There will be a new mind in 
Germany by the time the cripples she has made in this war have dis- 
appeared from her sight. For the gentle German there will then ])e 
no more of glory in the Sieges Alee. 

The only excuse advanced by Germany for choosing war which is 
at all adequate as a justification for her belligerent trespasses, is that 
Germany was surrounded by a world of enemies Mdio had avowed her 
destruction. And in the indigenous and radical tongue of the Ger- 
man, uncorrupted and unmollified as it has been, by the language and 
comity of Eome, an enemy is literally a fiend to be hated and de- 
stroyed. The Germans have certainly become fiends in their enmity 
toward the nations against which they have made war. And this 
fiendish animus, which seems to be a natural project of the German 
conscience and imagination, is by them freely ascribed to those na- 
tions which as belligerents are opposed to Germany in the present 
war. As I heard one simple and sincere German put it: '^Sie vwJlm 
die deutsche Sprarhe ganz vernichtenJ" It is true that the German 
grunts, and that his guttural speech has no consonance with the tongue 
of any other nation, but this does not justify the lie that the European 
powers were in a coalition to promote offensive measures for the de- 
struction and partition of Germany, which lie has been reiterated by 
Germans in all degrees, from Kaiser to Knecht, until they seem to be- 
lieve it to be the truth. And it is for this lie that Germany pro- 
fessedly wages this atrocious war, and fills eartli and air and sea with 
fiends who wield the implements of death and ruin. The Germans 
have made of war a religion, the professors of which for forty years 
have stood in rostnim and pulpit as the preceptors of the people. The 
whole people, in all degrees, have thus been impregnated with a culture 
of brutal materialism. The crime of Germanv is the crime of the 



THE GERMAN WAR 6 

German race. It may make of the Kaiser a scapegoat, but the ini- 
quity put upon him is the iniquity of the nation. It is to be hoped 
that this false philosophy will die with the present generation of Ger- 
mans. It cannot be dissipated by exposition or moral suasion. It 
will die only with those who profess it. It is an untoward condition 
rliat the biggest bigot* in Germany are professors in the universities. 

Let the Germans sit on the fatherland. No other nation wants any 
part of it. But it must be remembered that Schleiswig, Posen, and 
Lorraine are not proper parts of the German fatherland. Indeed, the 
military problem of this war is to drive the German army back to 
Germany. To the German militarist, Belgium has become the stake 
in this German game of blood and murder. But Germany must not 
be permitted to hold Belgium for ransom or to enlarge her borders by 
war. The Germans say that they have won Belgium by blood. Let 
them, then, hold it by blood uutil the blood run out. ' For if Ger- 
many be permitted to hold by convention that which she has taken by 
force, there will be no territorial security for any nation except that 
of major force and arms. The German conscience is perfectly ad- 
justed to the morality of war as a lawful status between nations, but 
is converted to none of the rules which relate to war as a lawful status. 
The German is insensible to blows. The German does not ratiocinate 
in terms which are common to the community of civilized nations. 
German Macht may, therefore, be impressed with neither reason nor 
terror. It yields only to superior force. 

The German government has yet to learn that the German, as he 
goes out into the lands of other nations to settle or sojourn, should 
respect and sustain the established governments of the lands where he 
would settle. He cannot cari'y his KoiserUfhe allegiance into new 
countries and rightfully enjoy 'the liberty and securitv of settlement 
that have been his in tlie British dominions and elsewhere in the civil- 
ized world. The Germans must keep the Kaiser, his KuUur, Krupps, 
and PoIiM' in the fatherlanrl. The maintenance by the German 
government of seditious spies and depredatory agents in foreign coun- 
tries is a grievous wrong against tlie people of German nativity and 
descent who have made their homes and allegiance in such countries. 

No right of the German state was threatened or challenged prior 
to the war. Her every right was freely accorded. Germany's com- 
merce was expanding on every sea, and was as free as the commerce of 
Holland and Denmark. Neither Holland nor Denmark cares how 
many ships of war England marshals in her navy, yet every battle- 
ship that Germany builds and eyerj soldier she arms is a cause of 
dread and terror to her neighbors. There is a saying that Britannia 
rules the waves, but in justice it should also be said that Great Britain, 
in her police of the seas has, in contemporarv times at least, and under 
the normal status of peace, upheld the right of every nation to the 
freedom of the seas, and there is no nation, not excepting Germany, 
which has any real apprehension that Great Britain will ever use her 
naval power to make war for the destruction or restriction of the mari- 
time liberties and rights of other nations. Great Britain's police of 
the seas has been a beneficent and unrequited service to the world. 



6 TBE GERMAN WAR 

Indeed, the nations know that Great Britain is worthy to be trusted 
with power; but there is hardly a government in Europe, Asia, or 
Africa that can or will or dare trust the imperial government of Ger- 
many. There is no field of tolerance in America, Asia, or Africa for 
German imperial politics. And there is assuredly some adequate 
cause for this other than the devilish einhreisungs diplomacy of Eng- 
land. Great Britain has held Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, and Singapore 
in effectual trust for the maritime liberty of all nations. And if 
Great Britain presently held Heligoland and Gallipoli, and controlled 
the estuary of the Elbe, the Kiel Canal and the Dardanelles would be 
as free and secure to the world's lawful maritime trade as are the Suez 
Canal and the Straits of Malacca. In the midst of German cant 
about the freedom of the seas, the greatest maritime need of Europe 
today is the neutralization of the Kiel Canal and the Dardanelles. It 
is an altogether salutary condition that the seas should not be free to 
any nation that unjustly makes war and disturbs the peace of the 
world. 

Germany's commerce before the war could not have been more free 
if she had within her navy all the dreadnaughts that plow the 36*38, 
and her commerce would be equally as free if she had none. But the 
Germans claim that the British were envious of the commercial and 
industrial progress of Germany. It is only just to say however, that 
whatever her misgivings as to the expansion and extension of German 
trade, England would never have made war for any such cause. Great 
Britain has not in either historic or contemporary times wronged Ger- 
many. There is no justification for the desperate hatred of England 
with which the German people have been so insidiously impregnated, 
except that England has interfered with Germany's war. It was only 
to stay the destructive hand of Germany in Belgium and France that 
Great Britain intervened, as was her interest and her right. And for 
this cause the Germans rage and chant their liymn of hate and say : 
"Wir haben nur einen, einzigen Feind. Goff, strafe England." The 
Germans seem too desperate to understand that the good will of the 
world is worth more for the extension of their commerce than the 
hate of England, the port of Antwerp, and all the glory that could be 
won in an hundred battles on the plains of Poland. 

Before the declaration of the Congress, tliat the United States was 
in a state of war with Germany, the most hopeful sign for an ultimate 
peace was the anxiety then manifested by the Germans for some justi- 
fication in the free opinion of America. It is greatly to be regi'etted, 
however, that the German political mind and conscience is so peculiar 
that it seems to afford no common point of understanding or articula- 
tion with the enlightened political conscience of America. And the 
Germans in America could render no greater service to their bellig- 
erent brethren than to partake and reflect American opinion in the 
fatherland and to convince their brethren that American opinion is 
not engendered by envy, hate, and jealousy, or because the German 
cable has been cut, as is assiduously asserted in Germany. This 
American opinion is not prejudice; it is a reasoned and impartial 
judgment upon the truth and the fact. America has been neutral in 



THE GERMAN WAR 7 

fact, but America has not been neutral in opinion.* She has refrained 
from partisan acts, but she has not stilled the processes of thought, of 
conscience and of reason. Neutrality in opinion is but an euphonious 
phrase. It denotes a solecism. A neutral opinion is no opinion at 
all. America, in response to the dictates of her conscience and her 
interests, has come into the war at the critical and cardinal hour. She 
will see the Entente through, and share in the eternal glory of the 
liberty and peace which will be won for all the people of the earth. 
The Germans in America seem to be sincerely in favor of peace and 
against war ; but they are not mindful that the immediate provocation 
to war and the necessary protection of our country was found in the 

*The following aiticle was written at the time of the German outbreak 
In 1914. It was in the pres.s on August 6th. It is given here as an ex- 
ample of spontaneous opinion in America upon the x-eeeipt of cable dis- 
patches, that Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium, Luxem- 
bourg, and Switzerland, and had killed unoffending natives of Holland, 
near Masstricht. The references to Switzerland and Holland it develops 
were not true, but this does not qualify the premise of fact! 

"The Gebman War. 

"One must have respect for the sturdy virtues of the German people, 
and it is with just such appreciation of the German people that we say 
that the imperial govei-nment of Germany deserves the reprobation of the 
civilized world. There can be no peace in Europe until solemn treaties 
between nations are scrupulously observed. The German government, in 
its wilful violation of the neutrality of Belgium, of Lxixemburg. and of 
Switzerland, has perfidiously broken its faith with the world, and stands 
without honor among the nations. Germany should be compelled to make 
full reparation for the consequences of her perfidious acts. 

"The first step for permanent peace in Europe is an authoritative delim- 
itation of national territorial boundaries and their maintenance by inter- 
national treaty and police. No frontier should be entered by a foreign 
military force except upon a warrant from an international court which 
shall precisely define the powers to be exercised. 

"The armed action of Germany in the present posture of affairs in Eu- 
rope is an International crime without the semblance of justification or 
excuse. The Kaiser's talk about clean hands and divine right is blas- 
phemj'^ in view of the unprovoked slaughter of the unoffending people of 
Holland and Belgium. And for what is Germany fighting? For her allies? 
She cares no more for her allies than for her enemies. She cares only for 
her own aggrandizement, and this she would pursue by force and arms 
without regard to international law or justice, or the rights of nations. 

"The whole policy and tradition of Prussia is founded upon the use of 
force for territorial aggrandizement. By this means the domains of the 
Elector of Brandenburg have been extended to Prussia. Silicia, Schleiswig- 
Holsteln, Hanover, Pomerania. and Alsace-Lorraine. 

"Germany is against judicial nrbitration of international questions. She 
believes in the arbitrament of the sword and in the exercise of military 
force to maintain and extend her dominions. Her attitude is a menace 
to peace and civilization, and it is the business of the world to put her 
through such a course of correction and contrition as shall cause her to 
have adequate respect for the rights of men and decent comity in her rela- 
tions with other nations. 

"At this date, the Ambassador of Austria remains at London. England 
and Austria are technically in a state of peace. The purpose of Austria in 
her armed entry into Servia for the chastisement of the Serbs has been 
accomplished. Austria should now withdraw her troops from Sen^ia. ac- 
cording to her stated intention, and leave the (Jerman Csesar to his per- 
sonal war with the world." 



8 THE GERMAN WAR 

acts and attitude of Germany and in the determination upon our part 
that the bearers of the spiked helmet should not find footing upon our 
coasts. The Germans should direct their peace appeals to the Kaiser. 
He is the one who can quit the war. 

The most refractory factor in the war is that the belligerent Ger- 
mans are so sincere in their bigotry as to believe that they are defend- 
ing the fatherland and fighting for their national existence, when, in 
fact, they are waging a trespassing and predatory war for the destruc- 
tion of neighboring nations. There is no cure for the sedentary big- 
otory with which the Germans are obsessed but to have their heads 
fixed so as to permit some penetration into their consciences of the 
wrongs of which they are guilty in their acts and attitude toward other 
nations. And Gerniany, too, must have it brought home to her, the 
meaning of her boast that she is sufficient for herself in peace and in 
war. In view of this boast there was certainly no reason in either 
morals or law why America should have intervened to prevent any na- 
tion from the exercise of its natural right of defense against German 
aggression in the present war. But Germany should rather be reminded 
of the many millions of American money and of unrequited service 
advanced to the succor of the victims of her cruelties and extortions 
in Belgiimi, Poland, and x\rmenia, for all of which Germany has a 
moral duty of indemnification. And Germany should further be re- 
minded that belligerent outlawry has no right to propose the compro- 
mise of the public law of nations for the accommodation of its atro- 
cious schemes. The United States has consistently and persist- 
ently, since the founding of the government, contended for the ac- 
knowledged rights of innocent persons and goods upon the high seas, 
and cannot, therefore, in honor consent to any diminution or abate- 
ment of these rights for the accommodation of Germany and her 
outrageous enterprises.* 

America fought one war to determine tliat a (lerman prince upon 
the throne of Great Britain should not impress and imprison American 
sailors and citizens upon the high seas, and America is now to fight 

*A neutral vessel may carry contraband to the ports of a belligerent, sub- 
ject to the risks of stoppage, visit, and search, and of capture by a public 
belligerent vessel. If the neutral vessel, upon visit and se.nrch, be found 
to have an enemy destination and to be carrying contraband, the neutral 
vessel may be seized and taken into port, and by this process be brought 
within the jurisdiction of a court having power to administer and enforce 
maritime law. Upon the judicial ascertainment of the fact that the ves.sel 
had an enemy destination and was carrying contraband, the contraband 
part of the cargo may be condemned, and if the cargo be contraband in 
excess of one-half of the same, then the vessel itself may be condemned. 

Merchant vessels of enemy nationality may. of course, be taken as prize 
wherever encountered, but as these vessels are private, and not public 
vessels, the owners of the same are entitled to have the (luestion of prize 
adjudicated in a court having maritime jurisdiction, which, of course, 
requires that the vessel be taken by a prize crew, or be towed into port for 
tbis purpose. 

A private neutral vessel has no right to resist the public armed vessel of 
a belligerent which halts her for the puri^ose of visit and search. If the 
neutral vessel may escape, she may do so, but if she come within the power 
of the belligerent public vessel, and is commanded to halt, and refuses to do 
so, she may then be taken by force, and if necessary be sunk. 



THE GERMAN WAR 9 

another war to determine that Germany shall not murder American 
sailors and citizens upon the high seas. In 1(S12, it was the liberty; 
in this year of grace, it is the life of her citizens which America must 
by force defend. 

The presence of submarines in tlie seas is unlawful except as 
they are engaged in belligerent operations against public enemy ves- 
sels. It is, therefore, the right of the American Government to use 
every effective means and weapon to clear the paths of commerce in the 
Atlantic Ocean from the presence and menace of German submarines. 
The submarine is not being used as an instrument of war. If it were, 
it would seek the public armed vessels of the enemy. It cannot be- 
come an instrument of maritime police or for the exercise of the privi- 
lege of stoppage, visit, and search to which, by the law of nations, neu- 
tral shipping may be subjected by a belligerent upon the high seas. 
The submarine is an instrument of stealth and murder. Those who 
employ it against merchant shipping, Avhether of belligerent or neutral 
nationality, have no status in law or morals other than that of felons 

It is clear that the submarine, acting within the limitations imposed by 
the nature of the thing itself, cannot become a proper instrument for the 
exercise of the privilege of visit and search to which private neutral ves- 
sels may, bj' the law of nations, be sub.1ected by a belligerent. The sub- 
marine does not pursue the public methods of approach which are indis- 
pensable to the exercise of maritime police. Tlie submarine, with respect 
to merchant shipping, cannot, therefore, be accorded the status of a public 
armed vessel. The methods of the submarine are those of stealth, and the 
only effective exercise of its power the inevitable murder of private per- 
sons who do not constitute any part of the public force of the enemy. The 
submarine, with respect to its operations against public armed vessels of 
enemy character, is engaged in legitimate acts of war, but such belligerent 
operations cannot, within the rules of war. be made against non-com- 
batant persons constituting the crews and passengers of neutral ships, or 
even of private enemy ships. The willful and delil>erate murder of non- 
combatant crews and passengers is a violation of the laws of war, even as 
between nations in a public state of war with each other. The illegal 
character of a submarine attack is accentuated in cases of attack upon 
non-combatants of neutral nationality. Such attacks are not authorized 
in the law of nations even as against belligerents, and, where perpetrated, 
constitute proper ground foi' reprisals of drastic cliaracter. The avowed 
acts of the German Government in the killing of American nationals upon 
the high seas would, under the law of retaliation which has the sanction of 
German profession and practice, be adequate ground for the condemnation 
and execution of an equal number of German subjects who might be found 
within the power and jurisdiction of the United States. Indeed, in con- 
formity with Germnn methods, America might seize a thousand prominent 
Germans as hostages, and iov every American life unlawfully taken on the 
high seas, execute a German of equal wealth and rank in expiation there- 
for. 

A series of outrageous attacks upon the lives of American citizens has 
been perpetrated by the German Government during the course of the war. 
These acts of stealth and murder would have been beyond the justification 
of the law of war, even if a state of war had been formally declared be- 
tween the United States and Germnny. As acts perpetrated by a bellig- 
erent upon a neutral, they are wholly without the pale of the law, and the 
vessels and men which perpetrate them are entitled to none of the rights 
and benefits of belligerents, but have the status of common criminals who 
are without the right of defense against any person or power which may 
apprehend them or destroy them. 



10 THE GERMAN WAR 

and pirates. The issue between the United States of America and 
the imperial government of Germany, stripped of its plainest terms, 
is whether or not Germany shall be permitted, under the guise of bel- 
ligerent rights, to murder non-combatants of either belligerent or neu- 
tral nationality upon the public waters of the high seas. There is 
neither justification nor excuse for such a practice under the law of 
nations. It is without precedent in the practice of nations which 
profess an adherence to international law. The interference with 
enemy trade by capture and blockade is a legitimate means of war. 
There are, however, neither pains, penalties, nor punishments of a 
personal nature prescribed by the law of nations for the carrying of 
contraband or the violation of blockade. The forfeitures are wholly 
by the condemnation and confiscation of property. But the condemna- 
tion, and, a fortiori, the destruction of American ships carrying con- 
traband, is in contravention of the Prussian-American Treaty of 1785. 
The murder of non-combatants is, therefore, a felonious practice 
which cannot be tolerated under any circumstances or justified from 
any premise of law, morals, or necessity. 

This is no time for sentimental conmiiseration with the German 
people. If the British blockade accentuates their hunger for peace 
sufficiently to induce them to quit the war, it will be entirely justified 
in good morals as it is justified in principle by the law of nations. 

Neither the British blockade nor the British Admiralty order of 
November 8, 1914, defining a military area in the North Sea was the 
initiation of ruthless naval warfare. It was quite proper for the 
British government to advise neutral merchant shipping of the dan- 
gers to be encountered in entering the North Sea, which were inci- 
dental to British naval activities and precautions in that area. The 
damages which have been suffered by neutrals in these circumstances 
have been incidental to belligerent naval operations, and are very dif- 
ferent in legal and moral quality from the damages which have been 
wilfullv inflicted upon neutrals, as in the case of the stealthy and 
deliberate destruction of American life and goods by German sub- 
marines. To assume the risk and perils of entering a military area 
is quite a different thing than to become the object of the predatory 
and piratical enterprises of the German navy. 

The Prussians claim to have a just grievance against the Russians, 
and say with an air of injury that they have been the innocent victims 
of Cossack cruelties. They should remember, however, that Germany 
declared war on Eussia, and that Eussia had no alternative but to 
fight. It is true that Eussia was mobilizing her forces for the relief 
of Serbia, but Germany preferred to declare war than by a word to 
recall Austria from her armed trespass against Serbia's territory and 
sovereignty. The tragedy at Sarejevo. Avhich overcame the Thron- 
folger of the Archduchy of Austria and opened the succession to an 
archduke more acceptable to the Austrian court, is not a cause which 
even extenuates Germany's guilt in forcing the hand of Austria to war 
at the very time the entente powers were seeking Germany's media- 
tion to accommodate the acute situation between Austria and Serbia. 
In anv view of the case between Russia and Prussia, it must be said 



THE GERMAN WAR 11 

that Russian militar\- methods are not so refined in barbarism and 
cannot be worse in morals than those of Prussia. Indeed, we know 
that the systematic and despotic repression of the Russian nation has 
been the work of the German bureaucracy which has dominated the 
civil administration of Russia. But this war means much for the 
the emancipation of the Russians. They will claim Russia for them- 
selves, and for them there is promise of a progress which shall be a 
realization of the culture of the humanities rather than that of war — a 
culture that will take due account that liberty is of the essence of the 
happiness of human life. 

German virtue and culture have been freely enough acknowledged 
and disseminated in the world. But what the world wants of these, it 
will come and take. Germans of the older generation, known for 
their human culture, were indeed among the kindliest of men, but the 
bloody Jcriegs-krazy German aus grosser Zeit is of a brutal breed, 
which must be taught that the world has no need for that Kultur 
which is projected from Krupp cannon. If the contemporary German 
could rid his psychological anatomy of this Krieg and Sieg business 
he would become a more tolerant human, and have greater capacity 
to acquire a decent respect for the virtues and rights of the men of 
other nations. He might then understand why it is that Alsatians, 
Savoyards, and Algerians, though of German, Italian, and African 
blood, would live and die for France and why it is that a century has 
not sufficed to reconcile the Poles, Czechs, and Serbo-Croats to German 
denationalizing domination. Some Germans have gratuitously made 
pretense that in this war Germany would avenge and redeem Ireland, 
Wales, and the Vatican ; but it need hardly be said that neither Ire- 
land, Wales, nor the Vatican would accept or tolerate the offices and 
intervention of German arms in their domestic relations mth Great 
Britain and the kingdom of Italy. For the erratic Irishmen who car- 
ried on a treasonable traffic with Germany there is only pity and re- 
gret. The patronizing pretense of sympathy toward an Irish republic 
is especially preposterous from Germany, which presently stands in 
the way of the extirpation of the bloody despotism of the Ottoman 
Turks and the constitution of a civilized Christian government in 
Asia Minor and Armenia. There should be no truce with the Turk. 
His political power must be terminated. And with the reduction of 
the political sovereignty of the Turk there must, for the world's good, 
he an extirpation from Africa and Asia of the politics of the Germans, 
his patrons and sponsors. The war should not end until this be con- 
summated : for neither the Teuton nor the Turk have contributed any- 
thing to the liberty or happiness of the submerged races under their 
political domination. Governments, on the other hand, which pro- 
mote the liberty and welfare of the people who dwell within their 
territories, may cause nations of different bloods and tongues to live 
in peace and fraternity and loyalty together. This, indeed, is the 
prime and legitimate function of all liberal governments. And so it 
may be said that the liberalization of governments is really more to be 
desired than the nationalization of governments. And in this process 
may be found one of the true ways of peace. But for the heteroge- 



12 THE GERMAN WAR 

nous nations oi central Europe, it would seem that the federation of 
liberalized and nationalized states promises most for that political 
equilibrium wiiich is necessary for European peace. This might well 
be consummated in a Balkan federation extending from the Adriatic 
to the Aegean, with (.Constantinople as the federal capital, the city 
itself, to the line of the Thachala forts, to either constitute federal 
territory or to become a free metropolitan state. 

The w^6rld has no interest in the extension of the dynastic authority 
of the house of HohenzoUern. It is more concerned with the libera- 
tion and progress of men and nations which may, in the nature of 
things, only be realized by the free unfolding of the virtues and cus- 
toms of the men of every race upon the basis of national tradition and 
the inspiration of national ideals. The fraternity of nations and the 
federation of states must be by the processes of liberty and custom, 
and not by the proclamations of imperial authority. Whatever there 
is of good in the language, religion, or culture of any nation should 
have right and liberty to exist in the world for the good of all nations. 
The assimilation of the tongues and customs of men must also be by 
the processes of liberty and convenience. And to Great Britain's 
honor, it must be said that she has not for an hundred years laid 
a destructive hand upon the language, religion, or customs of any na- 
tion within her political dominions. The federation of nations and 
dependencies which we call the British Empire has, therefore, become 
the greatest political factor for liberty and peace in the Eastern world 
today. And Britain's empire was builded by centuries of exploration, 
colonization, and adventure which stand in contrast with the seden- 
tary occupations and periodic outbreaks of the Germans in the father- 
land. Whatever may be the virtuous aspirations of the Mohammedan 
races to political independence, there are none which would willingly 
exchange British political tutelage for German imperial tyranny. 
Indeed, if Persia, ^tlesopotamia, and Arabia were to come voluntarily 
within the protection of the British Empire, with their foreign affairs 
regulated through the British foreign office at London, they would 
assure as in no other practicable way their territorial integrity and 
internal peace. 

Germany has a transcendent understanding of the utility of force, 
but is without an adequate appreciation of political morality and 
comity. Her mechanical diplomacy takes no account of moral forces. 
The only virtue she respects in other nations is her estimate of their 
power to fight. Her Weltpolitilc is foimded upon a careful calculation 
of her relative military strength as measured against that of other 
nations in war. In the view of German military politics, Japan sacri- 
ficed a great opportunity in the Pacific because she did not strike the 
United States before the completion of the Panama Canal. It should 
be said for Japan, however, that her territorial interests are in Asia, 
not in America, and that neither in Asia nor tow^ard America will 
Japan become the tool of German intrigue and malice. And yet with 
the avowal of such opinions and the contem])lation of possibilities for 
the destruction of the great cities on our Atlantic seaboard, Germany 
stupidly wonders why her foreign politics is not popular in America. 



THE GERMAN WAR 13 

The contemplation of schemes of this kind is inconsistent with frank 
and friendly inteniational relations. It was altogether natural that 
the German diplomatic attaches who had abused the comity and 
courtesy of the United States to plot murder, arson, and sedition 
should have said, upon their expulsion from the country, that they 
had done their duty as officers of the German army. A government 
whose mind and policy runs to such nefarious calculations is bound 
to provoke distrust and antipathy. The bitter complaint of the Ger- 
mans, because of the refusal of the world to acknowledge with grati- 
tude and homage Germany's forbearance of forty years to employ her 
military power for the destruction of other nations, is founded upon 
the peculiar German conscience that these nations have enjoyed peace 
and liberty not by their own right, but by grace of German sufferance 
and forbearance. And the Germans cannot understand why this for- 
bearance should have brought them the distrust rather than the good 
will of the world. And because of this distrust, Germany would have 
been balked in the Balkans, if only the will of the people and the views 
of the liberal statesmen of the Balkan nations could have prevailed 
over the dishonest dynastic diplomacy of the German princes who rule 
them, and who wickedly connived at the slaughter of the Serbs, whose 
national spirit rises like a holy flame from the ruins of their beloved 
land to enlighten the dawn of the day when nations shall not be forced 
to shed their blood to defend and enjoy their natural territorial rights 
and sovereignty. 

In the view of the military masters of Priissia this war is a legiti- 
mate German game. By the rules of the game they claim that the 
WAS has been won on points of strategy by Hindenburg's manoeuvres. 
And they are chagrined and provoked to anger because their adver- 
saries are so unprofessional as to keep up the fight. But it should be 
clearly understood that the issue of this war lies between the victory 
of Germany and the peace of the world. The war cannot stop imtil 
Germany quits. Germany must get out of the war business. And 
for this cause it is more just that Great Britain enhunger Germany 
for the sake of peace than that Germany destroy neutral life and goods 
for the sake of victory. The nations of the Americas are now ready 
for a normal state of international peace under their own system and 
auspices. The entente powers and neutral states of Europe, together 
with their dominions in Asia and Africa, are now ready for interna- 
tional peace in the eastern continents upon the basis of a permanent 
recognition and respect for each other's territorial and political rights. 
But Germany will not be prepared to enter the entente of Europe and 
a normal status of peace in her relations Avith the European states 
until German powder and predatory passion burn themselves out in 
the blood and horror and destruction of this wicked war. And what- 
ever may be the cost, the European states may just as well settle this 
question of German hegemony at this time as twenty years hence, for 
Germany has predetermined to bring the issue to the arbitrament of 
the slaughter field. The continental nations of the entente have been 
withstanding a terrible pressure of German fire and force, but Ger- 
many keenly knows that even if her stock of men and munitions be 



14 THE GERMAN WAR 

progressively replenished, she will remain in sequestration so long as 
Great Britain closes the seas to her commerce. This accounts for the 
desperate virulence of German Zeppelin and submarine attacks upon 
innocent people in the towns and boats of England. But as force and 
terror may never conquer the spirit of nations once free, Germany can 
gain no permanent peace by these means. Germany, indeed, can slay 
and destroy, but she must be brought to understand that enlightened 
humanity in these days has no more respect for fighting nations than 
for fighting men, and that the world refuses to be ruled by holy fright 
of Wilhelm der Ziveite. heroicomic Emperior of Europe, Admiral of 
the Atlantic. Protector of the Pontiff. Provocateur of the Jehad, 
Preserver of Turkey, Vindicator of Ireland, Patron of unser Gatf 
undt Allah, and projector of the Kaiserliche Knltur. 

The standards of yesterday may not be suffered to obtain today, else 
there should be no moral progress in the world. And in its moral 
aspects, this war is a conflict between rationalism and biology, be- 
tween the mind and the beast that is in men. The teeth of the beast 
must be drawn. There can, therefore, be no peace with German 
Schrerklichkeit and Siegeslust. For these the cure is not arbitra- 
tion : it is eradication. Tliis, indeed, is a tremendous problem, and 
calls for the persistent exertion of moral as well as material forces. 
Germany knows full well that no international conference will give 
her anything of profit or of glory from this atrocious war, and that 
force and fraud will not avail at the council table of nations. Her 
plan will be to fight to a truce in the expectation of retaining the lands 
she holds by trespass and arms. This was the ultimate purpose of the 
movement against Verdun^to make of the Meuse a new frontier 
against France. The recent German overtures for peace parlors were 
but an attempt for a truce upon the present status, with Germany in 
military occupation of Belgium, Serbia. Montenegro, Poland, Rou- 
mania and Courland. But the war must go on. The futility of thn 
German MachtpoJiliJi- and KneqskuU must be demonstrated before all 
the world, even if the war go on until Germany be disarmed and neu- 
tralized. The German Gei<ii must be made to accommodate itself to 
the rights and liberties of other nations. Germany does not fight to 
defend the fatherland, nor to vindicate her national honor and rights. 
Germany fights to destroy her neighbors and for the victory, vain- 
glory, and outlawry of Prussian arms. And outlawry has no right of 
defense in either field or forum. 

Professional pacifists are ruled by a phrase. They persist in their 
advocacy of arbitration as a substitute for international war. They 
do not undersand that arbitration is impossible with a government 
which denies the sanction and obligation of the principles, customs, 
and conventions by which a question in arbitration may alone be 
resolved into judgment. To be a proper subject for judicial arbitration 
a dispute must be in its nature justiciable. What is claimed or de- 
fended must be as of legal international right, and must be capable of 
being resolved in judgment upon acknowledged principles of inter- 
national law. This excludes questions purely of national passion and 
policy. The fact is that there has not been an important interna- 



THE GERMAN WAR 16 

tional war within the memory of the present generation, the cause of 
which was originally susceptible of judicial cognizance and arbitra- 
ment. There was nothing in the suspicions and controversies which 
eventuated in the present German war which was susceptible of judi- 
cial arbitration. There is not much of practical difficulty in adjusting 
international controversies which may be reduced by legal judgment 
to money debts or indemnities. It may be said now that no decent 
state denies or abridges the rights and liberties of the nationals of 
other states, and such personal and private controversies do not in 
these times afford cause for war between civilized states. Indeed, war 
between nations has long since been recognized as altogether too costly 
a process for the recovery of mere money debts and indemnities or for 
the vindication of purely personal rights. It may even be said at this 
time that those cases between nations which are analogous to civil 
cases between natural persons, where adverse national claims are held 
in good faith as to law and fact, have already acquired a normal course 
of diplomatic and judicial settlement. 

It is in the field of international polity, which is properly analogous 
to criminal process for the prevention and punishment of wilful 
breaches of the peace of nations, and for the suppression of the unlaw- 
ful use of force in national acts of trespass, piracy, arson, murder, and 
overt treasons and breaches of faith that arbitration is ineffectual. 
These crimes, indeed, may be and are committed without legal justi- 
fication or excuse by nations quite as well as by natural persons, and 
as against nations they call likewise for measures of arrest, suppres- 
sion, and vindication. States and persons may treat as to debt and 
damages, but a state may not arbitrate with belligerent outlawry in a 
subject or in another nation. If the Hague has any function in rela- 
tion to the German war, it will be the liquidation of the damages suf- 
fered by Belgium because of the armed trespass of Germany upon her 
territories and people. 

The great achievement of civilization has been the suppression of 
the unlawful use of force as between persons. Civilization has yet tn 
restrict the use of force between and against nations to those lawful 
objects and purposes which are recognized as proper by the enlight- 
ened custom and law of nations. As between nations, the unlawful 
use of force almost invariably manifests itself in the transgression of 
acknowledged territorial frontiers by military arms and violence. If 
the nations presently at war had confined their military operations to 
defensive measures within their own frontiers, there could have been 
no war. Nations assuredly have the same right of defense as do men, 
and as men may lawfully combine for defense of one another, so mav 
nations have a league to keep the peace, to unite their arms to defend 
a nation unlawfully violated and to suppress breaches of the peace of 
nations and acts of international outlawry. And it is righteous for 
white and brown and black and yellow men to do this together. 

The first step for a rational and enduring peace in Europe is a per- 
manent delimitation of national territorial boundaries to be acknowl- 
edged by international treaty and vindicated by international arms. 
No frontier should be entered by a foreign military force except upon 



16 THE GERMAN WAR 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 547 942 



an international warrant which shall precisely define the powers to be 
exercised. Nations must become as secure in their territories as are 
natural persons in their freeholds. There can be no other rational 
basis for international peace. The primary purpose of the peace that 
is to come must be to define every sovereign territorial area in the 
world and to ordain that the boundaries, thus settled by convention, 
shall not be altered by military trespass and violence. 

Those nations which made the first armed violation of the terri- 
tories of other nations were guilty of the provocative acts which 
brought on the present state of war. xVnd these guilty powers knew 
that they had no cause or grievance which could have been brought 
within tiie cognizance of an international judicial court. The passion 
for war and conquest with which bellicose nations are obsessed cannot 
be arbitrated. When such national passion and madness manifests 
itself in overt acts of violence, there is no remedy other than suppres- 
sion by superior force. A nation can no more arbitrate its territorial 
integrity and sovereignty than can a natural person his life or his 
liberty. For these there must remain the defense by force adequate 
for protection and vindication. The armed threat of Germany has 
provoked the world to arms against her. This is the answer to her 
insistence upon the power to strike. The laying down of her arms is 
her only possible invocation to peace. In the present posture, the 
only power adequate to deal with the German irruption is an alliance 
between nations which acknowledge and respect each others*' rights, 
for the protection and vindication of such rights, for the uniting of 
arms in mutual defense, and for the thwarting of the trespasser and 
the disturber of the peace of P^urope. And so it is the Entente, and 
not the Hague, which lias in its keeping the peace of the continent. 
And for this cause the Enteiit Powers fight to establish the peace 
of nations upon the fundament of international justice and the recog- 
nition and security of the territorial and political rights of the Euro- 
pean states. And this shall not be consummated until Gennany shall 
have been purged of her outlawry and sliall have been brought to re- 
spect the conventions and the public law of nations. 



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